How to kill in a demon’s skin

Hello everybody! I’m Dan and together with the team at Ludus Future we created the game of my dreams titled demon skin. It took a few years of hard work and challenges to develop and now it’s finally available on Xbox! I would recommend watching the trailer to get a better understanding of what the game is about before telling you who, what and how to kill in this game.

demon skin is a 3D platform game with RPG elements, mainly focused on melee combat. My main source of inspiration was Separation: Blade of Darkness–Even though the game is 20 years old and few remember it, personally I still think the melee system is the best.

Where was a major downside in Separation: Blade of Darkness though – the difficulty curve wasn’t optimized at all. The game mechanics were brand new and quite difficult and the opponents were too aggressive – this was not a game for casual players at all. People often just couldn’t understand how to play it. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time for such an approach. As for me, I’ve decided to make a game with a similar feel, but make it a platformer with a whole bunch of ideas of my own.

Our main character, Roy, can assume three combat stances in the game. By changing direction, he can aim at the enemy’s head, torso, or legs. The player must change his stance in time to avoid enemy attacks. Each new level unlocks more and more spectacular and powerful combos. Meanwhile, the player should always pay attention to stamina. Once Roy is out of breath, he attacks much more slowly.

Originally, we wanted the character not to be able to attack as it was in this case Separation: Blade of Darkness, but this did not meet with the approval of our congregation.

We also developed a system of additional attacks that appear randomly during battle. With the stall indicator flashing blue, you can quickly select and execute this attack. It won’t improve your damage, but it will buy you a few seconds to super attack.

If the opponent had less than 30% of their health left at that point, the player would finish them off dramatically. This mechanic is useful for both casual gamers who are more into storytelling, and hardcore gamers, as it allows them to perform a sort of “Deathfall” without a special hotkey.

With each new kill, the main character gains experience, which can be converted into points to improve basic stats – health, stamina, and attack. Leveling up unlocks new weapon combinations. By the way, the appearance of the protagonist also changes as the player progresses in the game and collects the crystal shards.

Roy has a variety of weapons in his arsenal, including cutting (swords and axes) and blunt (hammers) weapons. The slashing weapons deal 100% damage against “fleshy” enemies, but are 30% less effective than blunt weapons against other types of monsters. Because of this, it would be wise to select a blunt weapon before engaging with insects, skeletons, or golems so Roy can dish out 100% of potential damage.

All weapons are divided into three categories – common, personalized and artifacts. Not only the quality of your weapon affects the stats, but also the weapon combo damage – for example, while a personalized weapon deals 3-5x damage, the artifact weapon deals 10-15x magic damage (though only if the special bar is full at the moment of the attack (this bar slowly fills up with each kill).

Enemies in Demon Skin are definitely of interest. As I prefer to stick to the high fantasy canon, there are familiar enemies like undead, ghouls, necromancers, dwarves, golems and various beasts. It’s worth noting that they belong to different factions and sometimes fight each other – e.g. Derger (dwarf) is hostile to undead or insects, but he doesn’t fight golems like he does. Similarly, praying mantises will attack spiders as soon as they see them, so the player has to make a decision on how to act in such a situation.

Basically it’s everyone for themselves. For example, a player goes to the next location and finds three gnomes there fighting a giant praying mantis. It might be better not to jump into the fight. Just wait for a result and decide if you want to engage or just zip by with the good old reel train without gaining any experience points, which won’t be a smart move as the number of enemies on each level is limited and they aren’t do respawn.

Each enemy has a unique behavior pattern. Since zombies and skeletons are already dead, they just keep pushing ruthlessly. Ghouls and werewolves are more insidious and usually choose the right moment to attack. Dwarves can drink a healing potion while the player tries to avoid a possible attack, or conversely, they can knock the potion out of the player’s hands to prevent healing. When a player comes within sight of a humanoid enemy, the creature may assume a fighting stance, indicating that the player is having a hard time. An insect, on the other hand, can try to burrow into the ground and then attack from the other side. Such details require the player to take a considered approach when it comes to enemy encounters, making them much less predictable and more enjoyable.

There is none bosses in the game so to speak, as I believe that the definition of “strong character” fits better with the gameplay of demon skin. Although the boss fight is usually staged at a certain endpoint of the level like in many other games, in demon skin These powerful characters can be encountered by the player anywhere that fits the narrative.

While playing demon skin You don’t just move from one control point to another across the static location like many other platform games. For example, let’s say Roy runs through the ice cave while a giant golem rips off his fellow golem’s head, and the player later finds that head. This head is breakable and there is some loot inside.

In another example, Roy is surrounded by skeletons when a Treant-like creature comes out of the forest, confronts skeletons and helps Roy escape. You may think Roy is safe, but an evil magician casts a flaming meteorite spell, unleashing a deadly snow avalanche. Similar events happen all the time, adding a lot of unexpected thrills to the gameplay.

Anyway, it’s up to you to make one of those decisions, choose tactics and defeat the evil. As for me, I did my best to give you the best experience demon skin! I can’t wait for your feedback and I hope you will enjoy the game!